Lord’s Day Reflection: ‘They filled them to the brim’

By Marion Nguyen, OSB*

The servants filled them to the brim at Jesus’ command: “fill” or in Latin, “implete”. The jars were filled and immediately they turned into wine. We do not have the precise number of guests at this wedding, but with these jars, Jesus made approximately 757 bottles of wine. We recently celebrated the Christmas season recalling the incarnation of God as man. We now begin ordinary time with the first act of Jesus’ public ministry, the miracle of the wine at Cana. What is God trying to communicate to us?

Three words come to mind: extravagant, joy, and human. 

Extravagant: God does not hold back once He has decided to give. The servers filled the jars to the brim. The amount of wine made was roughly 150 gallons. Such extravagance reminds us of Jesus’ teaching on generosity: that God will not be outdone, “Give and gifts will be given to you: a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap” (Lk 7:38).

Joy: God desires our happiness. There is an odd temptation in the world to project stinginess and rigidity onto God. This passage makes it obvious that the God of Jesus is the very opposite: He did not send His Son into the world to “steal and slaughter and destroy; [but] came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (Jn 10:10). Imagine the immense joy of the host family witnessing how Jesus not only saved them from humiliation, but provided an overabundance of premium wine. We are reminded of the words of the psalmist that equates wine with joy: You have given oil to make his face shine and wine to cheer man’s heart. Cf. Ps 104:15. Jesus cheered many hearts at this wedding.

Human: in Jesus, God loved with a human heart. The word “implete” is used only one other time in the Bible, when God pronounced, “Implete terram et subicite eam” (Gen 1:28). God commanded the first man and woman to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” The first command was the fill the earth with man; the second command was to fill the man with God. This miracle is accomplished symbolically in the water turning to wine and factually in Jesus: “by the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” And humanity is forever changed from the inside out with a divine love that is so extravagant, so joyful, so human.

*Abbot of St Martin Abbey
Lacey, Washington, USA